All the Lyrical Offerings of a Can of Spam

I’m in the movie theater. We’ve just finished Alice in Wonderland (in German, not English, btw) and are sitting watching the final credits roll as some 3-D eye candy grows up and around a trellis. This here is visual entertainment at it’s finest, comparable to the bloopers from Shrek and anything recent with CGI. I love when studios take the time to care about the post-movie details. It’s really a show of diligence and willingness to do a complete job. We didn’t need to watch plants slowly bloom in 3-D as we waited for the the theater to clear, but it was pretty nice.

But, all was not right with the world. There was a song playing. Part of the soundtrack, and I’m sure someone paid good money for that song.

Since there was no German to translate mentally, I was listening to the lyrics as most people know I am prone to do. The song kind of pissed me off. Here was someone with a great voice, spouting some lyrical garbage that was meant to relate to the struggles of the young heroine in the film we’ve just seen. Yeah yeah, I get it. Some teenage-level (no offense, teenagers) tripe with no depth at all, and it was just full of… nothing.

I kind of wrote it off as we got up to leave and figured I wouldn’t hear it again, no real need to anyway. Of course, never the case: it was Avril Lavigne’s Alice, with a Burton-esqe music video doomed to Avril on the TV. It was Avril again on the radio. So unfortunate. On all fronts.

It appears that I have trained myself at the subconscious level to reject anything Avril-related. I didn’t even recognize it was her, since her voice is not exactly recognizable (albeit decent), and still decided it was a worthless song.

I really, really can’t get this girl, even though I kind of understand SOME parts of her. We were all there, that way, once. But now? She is a 24-year old living this fantasy of a life where she is internationally popular, well liked, well paid and (was) happily married; and she is still writing the same faux-angsty bullshit of her high school days. Seriously, I am pretty sure my most illiterate friends in high school wrote better pre-emo poetry/song lyrics than she does. And she has no seeming reason to write this… stuff.

Other stars (like Pink) have evolved and write really well, all the time, regardless of the subject matter. On the other side, we’ve got Avril sitting here writing all of the same hackneyed complaints for over 7 years now. Just… ugh. New material, sound, attitude, please? You’ve got some talent in that voice, but the subject matter really needs to be stepped up. The music has NO depth. At all.

Yes yes, you’ve won tons of awards, and if it ain’t broke, I get it. But still. Take some risks, please?